That is a fair point with those caveats. And as we’re describing high-end work, we should assume that these can / will be true.
Does mastering mean rendering? Thank’s for your help 
In Flame when doing QC etc before the export. But this month there hadn’t been any Prores from grading so they all got kept at 16.
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In the context of video delivery I think of ‘mastering’ as the high quality render at the end of the project, the one you will archive of the finished work, and may deliver to the client.
Your timeline may use 16fp or 32fp precision, and a scene referred color space while working. Essentially a very expansive representation, because as operations get stacked having this extra precision is helpful in avoiding degrading of the result.
The master render most often would be a 12bit ProRes or DNx codec which is log encoded and with moderate compression. It retains all the detail you may have to deliver in the next 5-10 years.
When working with HDR, the master would also be the HDR grade, as the SDR grade can always be derived from it much more easily then other way around.
In some scenarios a master may be an EXR sequence, but that’s less frequent and only for the most discerning.
From that master you can then make delivery renders to the client’s specs - whether that is H.264 for online or whatnot. When the client later comes back and wants a different spec, you don’t have to go back into the Flame project, you just run a transcode of the archived master.
For that purpose it’s good to keep a textless master in case you ever need to fix GFX or titles, and then also keep a key/fill version of any GFX. Which is a pain point because most apps have a hard time rendering a key/fill version of a timeline. Avid is reasonably good at it, haven’t tried it with Flame.
You can divide all codecs into three classes:
- camera codecs: the many versions of AVC, OCN, RED/ArriRAW, etc. (various compressions)
- mezzanine codecs: ProRes, DNx, EXR, etc. - moderate compression, usually all-i codec class (each frame is independent)
- delivery codecs: H.264, H.265, etc. - high compression, usually long-gop codecs class (clusters of frames are compressed together) and
In the context of audio delivery, the master is usually the final pass a mastering engineer does over the final mix, fixing balance, eq, compression, loudness issues and making sure the final render is to delivery spec.
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Thank you Jan for that very helpful informations